Report -German Village (Dec 2016)

28DL Full Member

Not sure if this has been done before, but here is my report and photos: IT’S the German village deep in rural Wales whose hush-hush military purpose means you’ll never find it on any map.Cilieni was designed as a mock village during the Cold War in the early 1980s to enable soldiers to prepare for battle with the Soviets.But now the little-known training area – to which the public rarely has access – will form the backdrop for a re-working of the first recorded European play, Aeschylus’ The Persians.The haunting setting includes houses with obliterated walls, burned-out tanks and spent shell cases.But you’ll never hear the sound of the church bells ringing or a tractor trundling along in the hamlet in the heart of the Brecon Beacons National Park. Instead, it reverberates only to the shouts of soldiers storming homes or firing their weapons at an unseen enemy.The MOD acquired several thousand acres of Mynydd Epynt in 1939. This now forms the core of the SENTA. It is one of the largest military training zones in the UK and is of restricted access owing to the use of live ammo and explosives. The annual usage of the facilities is with training available on 350 days of the year, lucky today wasn't one of them. The facilities are used not just by trainees in the UK armed forces, but also by service personnel from elsewhere and by private firms such as security companies. Not much info on this of the functions served by the Sennybridge Training Area since 1940. An account of the various military training uses up to 1990. Apart from artillery practice, there was anti-tank training, especially after the opening of Anti-Tank Range South in 1977, not far from Blaenegnant-Uchaf. There were training in throwing grenades, at first by hand and later using shoulder controlled launchers, the Grenade Ranges being in the vicinity of Llawr-Llamarch. There is a number of shooting ranges, and again a progression from targets that had to be moved and placed upright by hand to radio-controlled targets. In 1983 a Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Battle Run were opened, not, we are assured, to provide practice in the use of weapons of mass destruction, but to train troops in methods of defending themselves against them. There were assault courses and areas for training in demolition, in particular, the Practical Demolition Area just south of Cwm Egnant, this was not accessible today. We had about 20 minutes here before it was time to go.

28DL Member

Moderator

Nice Pictures - Nothing unusual or secret about it whatsoever, its one of several FIBUA (Fighting in Built Up Areas) villages around the country, they are imbedded in military training areas and are rarely named as villages, but tend to show up as a group of buildings only. I recognised this as Sennybridge as Bertie has already pointed out. Elsewhere on the training area there is an Afgan village for training for the recent Afghanistan War. With the advent of Google Earth these structures are better known today than they were back in the Cold War..

We are all part of History - Only difference is we are still living our bit.

Subterráneo

Been through here many times while competing in Special Stage rallies over the Epynt ranges. The twisty bits through the villages are handy for organisers to keep the average stage times down after the very flat out nature of the ranges.
Never had chance to take too much notice of the buildings tbh.